Jane--Our Stranger: A Novel

by Mary Borden

VI

Philibert had given himself a month in which to win Jane’s hand, and it took him five. I don’t know why I find any comfort in this fact, but I do. I am glad she kept him waiting. I am glad the two conspirators were uncomfortable, even for so short a time, and there is no doubt that they were uncomfortable. Jane paid no attention to her mother’s funny little friend, who wore corsets and high heels and used scent. She sized him up in a long grave glance that covered him from tip to toe and then seemed to forget about him. The truth was that she was absorbed in her mother. To her great delight she had found in that quarter an unexpected cordiality. It almost seemed as if her mother had decided to like her. She had never been half so nice.

And she fell in love with Paris.

Wonderful enchantress city, queen woman of cities! It had assumed to greet her its most charming and gentle aspect. She arrived one evening in June. She held her breath as she drove across the Place de la Concorde, where the light was silver and blue, and up the Champs Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe that stood out against the sunset glow like a great and lovely gate into Heaven. She thought, so she told me afterwards, of the magic city under the sea in the poem by Edgar Allen Poe. The following morning she was up with the milkman and had slipped out of the house alone before any one was awake, and had walked from the Avenue du Bois down to the Tuileries Gardens and back again as the newsvenders were taking down the shutters of their kiosks. They smiled at her and nodded. A little morning breeze laughed in the trees. A woman came by wheeling a cart full of flowers. She filled her arms and arrived at her mother’s doorway breathless with pleasure. Mrs. Carpenter had the sense not to scold her, but she was obliged during the days that followed to engage a special duenna who could walk far enough and fast enough to keep up with her daughter. It appeared that Jane had read a good deal of French history. She visited churches, monuments and museums and made excursions to Versailles, la Malmaison, Fontainebleau. The Rue de la Paix amused her, she liked the clothes her mother bought her; but after a long morning at the dressmaker’s, standing to let little kneeling women drape silks on her young body, she would gulp down her lunch and start out again to explore, on foot, refusing to take the motor.

One day she turned into this little street. I saw her. I thought at first that she was a Russian, some young Cossack princess perhaps. Her dog, a Great Dane, walked beside her, his head close to her splendidly moving limbs. I had never seen any one walk like that. She came on, her head up, her arms down along her sides, and the wind, or was it the force of her own swift movement, made her garments flow back from her. It was the Victoire de Samothrace walking through the sunlit streets of Paris. I watched her approach with a strange excitement. Behind her trotted her valiant duenna, a hurrying little woman in black. And as the radiant white figure came nearer I saw that she was very young, scarcely more than a great glorious child, and her strange ugly face under her close white hat shaped like a helmet seemed to me, all glowing though it was with health, to be half asleep. When she was gone I turned back to my rooms and sat with my head in my hands thinking of how curious it was, the regal carriage of that fine free controlled body, and that face that did not know itself. I felt oppressed and exhilarated and somehow full of pity. It was dangerous to be like that, so young, so brave, so unknowing. Yes, an ugly face, but her walk was the most beautiful I had ever seen.

Through July Philibert made no progress with his suit. It was a puzzling problem for him and for Izzy. Mrs. Carpenter found herself the all too successful rival of the man she had selected for her daughter. Jane’s attitude was simple enough. She enjoyed everything immensely and felt that this was just what she had hoped to find. Her wonderful mother who had appeared at one time not to care for her was now giving her daily proofs of affection. And so she was happy. Mrs. Carpenter must have been nonplussed. The connection was obvious, for the more contented Jane was the less sign did she make of wanting anything else. She was delighted at being with her mother: how could it occur to her to want to get married?

And Philibert’s artfulness with women was of no use to him here. His professional tricks were wasted. He could only hold her attention by telling her about the things she looked at; histories, anecdotes, dissertations on art and architecture she would listen to with profound interest. She kept him for hours in the galleries of the Louvre discoursing on the great masters, and occasionally she would say with a sigh while he mopped his exhausted head—“How much you know.” It was the only tribute he got from her.

For August they went to Trouville. Monsieur Cornuché had not yet invented Deauville. The trip was very nearly Philibert’s undoing. He was very hard put to it, was our Philibert, during that month of August. And how he must have hated it. Nothing but sheer grit kept him going, nothing less than the most enormous prize would have induced him to put up with so much misery.